Chocolate Cupcakes
by EKBlack
Summary: An oh-so-sweet Ryouga+Ranma ficlet. So innocent and cute that it's rated "G", for heaven's sakes. Based upon an incident early in the manga (read my notes). My first Ranma fic, and it's already a shounen-ai. See what CLAMP does to you? ~.~ R/R now!!


Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes

Notes: A decidedly non-canon Ranma+Ryouga ficlet with very little plot and an obviously unusual pairing. This was inspired by the early Ryouga episodes of the manga, when a flashback shows Ranma, then a classmate of our favorite pointy-toothed boy, capturing the daily bread while beating Ryouga mercilessly to get it. Very silly, eh? I think so too

Disclaimer: All rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, although I wouldn't mind owning the boys

****

Chocolate Cupcakes

*

"Saotome!" Hakada-sensei had been having a Very Bad Day. His two-year-old son had nearly burnt the flat down, his wife was practically estranged due to some forgotten argument that neither felt like apologizing for, and on the way to this second-hour biology class his briefcase had suddenly decided to empty itself of his notes and graded assignments in the crowded hallway. And as he had started the lecture, he'd noticed that he had an enormous coffee stain on his new silk tie and that the bottoms of his shoes were peeling apart. Only a mentally unbalanced person would have wanted to annoy him.

"SAOTOME!!" Apparently the semi-deliquent _was_ mentally unbalanced. Just as he'd thought.

The other students passed nervous glances. Hakada was writing on the board and had not noticed Ranma's absence, and, after the glances were passed, none of the boys volunteered to notify the teacher.

Finally, the normally mild and soft-spoken Hakada-sensei turned, trembling, and threw one of the five-hundred-paged textbooks in the direction of Saotome's usual seat, only to have it be caught by the bandanna-wearing kid who sat behind the missing Ranma. "Sir," said Ryouga, standing with the book balanced on his fingertips as though it were only a piece of paper, "I don't think that Saotome-kun's here."

Hakada goggled at the quietly powerful young man and then made a flurried motion. "S-sit." Ryouga sat.

*

In fact, at that moment the "semi-deliquent" was asleep. His bespectacled father snored in the futon next to his on the tatami; last night the two had sparred lateor early, depending on how one saw it. At any rate, they were exhausted and slept that way.

Some time past noon, Ranma woke, rubbing at his eyes as his hand rose habitually to turn off the alarm clock. To his sleepy surprise, it wasn't ringing its little mechanical head off as it usually did, and when his eyes focused on the hands he knew why. "DA---D!!" Genma sat up with the yell and then lay back as though returning to sleep. "How could you let me oversleep, you big lug?" In under three minutes Ranma had his uniform on (albeit untidily) and his lunch box under an arm, his book bag under the other, and was flying out the door.

*

The schoolyard of the high school was deserted when Ranma, trotting on the fence at top speed, arrived. "Hm," he muttered through a mouthful of the rice cake he'd grabbed from someone along the way as breakfast, "weird." But then he remembered, it was lunchtime and the entire student body was probably jostling over the last piece of bread in the cafeteria, as usual. Sighing, he slipped in the cafeteria window, to find it just as empty as the yard. "Even weirder." Ranma ran through the hallways, occasionally opening the doors of classrooms, but no one was there. Starting to panic, the young martial artist ran to the back courtyard, where there was a large field for sport events, and encountered all the students clinging to the chain-link fence that separated their own all-boys prep school from the neighboring coed public school. After recovering from his facefault and obligatory sweatdrop, Ranma poked a boy on the shoulder. "What the heck's goin' on?"

The other boy turned a tear-covered face to his schoolmate. "It's Valentine's Day"

Ranma shrugged. "So?"

"Look." The yard of the neighboring school was filled with girls handing out chocolates and boys stuttering, blushing, running away, or doing all three in return_. _No wonder the others were so obsessed with watching, thought Ranma, half disgusted and half wistful. _They_'ve got nobody to give candy to 'em. He surveyed the scene. But if the whole school was out _here_, then that meant that they weren't in the _cafeteria_ getting the breadwhich meant that it was up for grabshe shot towards the cafeteria window with uncanny speed.

*

"Whaddya mean, it's gone?" Ranma had a firm grasp on the cook's collar. 

"I mean," the older man said, with the air of explaining to a tiny child, "that some other kid got the food and ran off."

"Who?!" The grasp tightened. But Ranma already knew, of course.

"Thethe kid with the yellow bandanna. You know." The cook was dropped unceremoniously on the tiles as Ranma, not a little angry, bounced back out the window, knowing he'd probably never see the bread again. "Geez, kids these daysfightin' over a little cupcake" The heavyset man rubbed his temples. "In my day it was pickled radishesmuch healthier" 

*

"Stupid math teacher," Ranma pressed so hard on the lead of his pencil that it broke. "Stupid algebra." He had a strong urge to rip the practice problems on which he'd struggled for the last two hours, and was about to do so when a loud _clank_ came from somewhere outside. He dropped the doomed worksheet and flipply lithely out the window, shimming down the drainpipe until his feet reached the ground. _Clank_ came the noise again, to his left. Adrenaline surging, he broke through the bushes and smacked right into someone's chest.

When he managed to get up, he lunged forward again and grabbed the intruder's arms. "What you doing here in the middle of the night?" The stranger mumbled something. "What?!"

"HERE!" A box was shoved into Ranma's hands as the mysterious person ran off. Ranma, stunned, let him escape and climbed back to his room with the box tucked in his shirt. Once safely inside his room, with the door locked, he took it out and scrutinized the very ordinary white cardboard. "I wonder if it's a bomb or somethin'." Curling up on his bed, he lifted the cover. 

It was a slightly crushed chocolate cupcake, unmarked except for a wobbly heart drawn in white frosting on top. 

*

****

Coda

(The next morning, somewhere in Japan, a young man is wandering around with an upside-down map of a small suburb of Tokyo clutched in one fist.)

Ryouga: Where the heck _am_ I?!

Passerby: I think you're in Kansai

***O-WA-RI***

PostScript: Ryouga: AAAAAHHH!! My god, you made me seem like some sentimental little dolt!!

Ranma: *snickering* I always knew you had it in youand how long did it take you to get to my house anyway, baka?

Ryouga: 

Ranma: I knew itahahaha

Ryouga: I-I did it on purposefor the cover of, uh, the cover of the darkness. 

Eva: -_-() Er, just review, would you? Please? *sigh* First Ranma fic and it's a (cute) shounen-ai. Ugh. Look what CLAMP did to me


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